


This is Halloween

by APgeeksout



Category: Veronica Mars (TV), Veronica Mars - All Media Types
Genre: Halloween, Missing Scene, Trick or Treat Exchange Extra, movie compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-26
Updated: 2014-10-26
Packaged: 2018-02-22 16:04:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2513642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/APgeeksout/pseuds/APgeeksout
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five of Veronica's Halloweens in Neptune.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This is Halloween

**Author's Note:**

  * For [empty_marrow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/empty_marrow/gifts).



**Halloween 1990**

Veronica dressed as a Sheriff's Deputy, complete with fringed chaps, a felt cowgirl hat with holes strategically cut in the crown to let blond pigtails poke through, and a gold plastic star.

She doesn't remember that holiday or that costume, but there's a picture in her dad's office, Deputy Veronica propped on his hip, above the holster containing a toy six-shooter, one of her chubby fists curled around the badge fixed to his pocket.

There's another photo tucked into the frame – a group shot from one of the Department's Labor Day pancake breakfasts – covering the face and torso of the woman in the flouncy Miss Kitty skirt at his side.

**Halloween 2002**

No one trick-or-treats in high school. Or at least Lilly insists they don't, and even though Veronica knows that can't be true – _never, no one, everyone, always_ mostly turn out to be lies, even when people don't mean for them to be – things are always more fun when she goes along with Lilly's plans.

They go to the Echolls' instead, holed up in the guesthouse with Logan and Duncan and Dick and Madison and a bunch of other kids, plus select offerings from the finest liquor cabinets in the 90909 ZIP. Which goes really well with the Halloween candy and caramel apples everyone's putting away, evidently.

The two of them end up on one of the main house's unused balconies, giggly and flushed – though not in the same gross state as most of their friends across the manicured lawn – and painting each other's toenails with Lynn Echolls's nail polish collection.

“Next year,” Lilly says, adding dots of sparkly silver to the toes of Veronica's left foot, “we throw the party everyone wants to go to. No X-Box and no vomit in the living room when we're in charge.”

**Halloween 2003**

Veronica leaves the porch light off; she doesn't feel like talking to trick-or-treaters or reporters or anyone else who might knock on their door tonight.

Dad's at work, and Mom hasn't left the bedroom since breakfast. She's in her own room, looking at the forlorn and abandoned costume hanging on the back of her closet door: secondhand prom dress and long, long blonde wig. Rapunzel. Duncan was supposed to be Prince Charming. Lilly and Logan as (Sexy) Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf. It was going to be a whole thing.

She can't remember being the person who shopped for fairy tale princess accessories just a few weeks ago.

Though, she does feel a little like Cinderella the next morning, while she's hosing egg yolk and shell fragments off the front of the house.

**Halloween 2004**

“You have been putting one of each color flyer, plus two business cards in each envelope, right?”

“'Happy Halloween, Wallace! Thank you for spending your evening helping me stuff envelopes for my latest brilliant and maybe slightly-shady mystery project, Wallace!'” Wallace said brightly. “Yes, Veronica,” he continued in his more normal tone, “some of us are actually pretty good at following instructions.”

“You love me for my iconoclasm,” she said. “And you've already experienced my gratitude in the form of Rice Krispie treats with candy corn.”

“Those _were_ pretty good,” he conceded, sealing the top of the 200th and final envelope.

“Do me a favor? Grab that bag on the counter?”

“We're not done? I was pretty ready to be done.”

“Wallace Fennell, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to don the costume in this bag, drive yourself to the address on the index card inside, enter the party, and locate Morgan Andrews. She'll be a sexy black cat, and waiting to meet the totally smooth secret admirer who's been leaving Halloween candy in her locker all week. Happy Halloween, Wallace.”

He laughed, “You, too. Thanks for involving me in your latest brilliant and maybe slightly-shady mystery project.”

**Halloween 2014**

She's never passed out candy in Dad's new neighborhood, and there are way more miniature Ninja Turtles and Avengers and zombies and witches ringing the doorbell than she'd have guessed. Maybe it's just that all the parents are pretty sure there won't be razorblades in the former Sheriff's candy.

In any case, she runs out of Skittles and M&Ms just as the clock ticks past the end of Neptune's official trick-or-treating period. She's just settling back down in front of _The Nightmare Before Christmas_ with Backup III, Esquire – offspring of Cliff's lab and a neighbor's terrier – when the bell chimes again.

She should have known better than to think timing would work out in her favor. Veronica Mars's luck has been pressed too far and too often.

She's talking to the stragglers even as she opens the door. “I can offer you a handful of chocolate chips, or your pick of the pocket change, rubberbands, paperclips in this jar on the endtable.”

“What if I have a treat for you, instead?” Logan asks, holding out a bottle of wine.

She wants to ask why he didn't tell her he'd be ashore, and how long she'll get to keep him this time around, but instead – or at least, _first_ ; she's never going to be good at waiting for answers, and she thinks they're both at peace with that, finally – she pulls him across the threshhold and into her arms. “I'd say you keep surprising me with all the new tricks you've picked up.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The wrong side of the fairy tale (This is Halloween Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4222359) by [pamymex3girl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pamymex3girl/pseuds/pamymex3girl)
  * [Get Up, Get Out, Get Away ('This is Halloween' Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4231515) by [nevertothethird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nevertothethird/pseuds/nevertothethird)
  * [The wrong side of the fairy tale (This is Halloween Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4222359) by [pamymex3girl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pamymex3girl/pseuds/pamymex3girl)




End file.
